Can Microsoft open its arms to FOSS?
By Mitchell Ashley Microsoft has gone through a lot of changes since Bill Gates’ departure. In the old days Microsoft was brash and over-the-top and thought it could bully users into using Microsoft, and only Microsoft, wares. Today’s Microsoft is searching for its next identity in an upside down, open source, cloud-centric world, with competitive threats coming from every direction — from old enemies such as Apple and Oracle to relative newcomers such as Red Hat and Google. Ironically, Microsoft has changed the most and the least when it comes to open source software. Redmond can no longer ignore the fact that the lion’s share of the Internet is built on Linux and the open source LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). Some enterprises still have a Microsoft-centric environment based on ASP.Net, but mixed environments are far more prevalent and in those, open source is the rule rather than the exception. Microsoft is tip toeing into a new relationship with open source, but still i
